Amazing Snakes" is a book for kids about snakes, and its official list price is $6.95. But few people pay that much.

If you or I want to buy the snake book, which is part of the popular "Eyewitness" children's science series, just about any Toys 'R' Us carries it for a 20 percent discount. A big distributor would price it even less, at 40 percent off.

Even the New York City Board of Education does not pay list price.

The school board pays more.

It paid $7.65 for "Amazing Snakes," 1990 edition - 10 percent above the list price, nearly twice what the city might pay a distributor. "You talk about a scandal," says Judith May-McGowan, a school librarian.

Snakes are just the start. The state provides $35 in textbook money for each child. In New York City, the Board of Education wastes up to $14 of that by making librarians pay list price for the books instead of buying at discounts of 40 percent.

We will have politicians chiseling Caribbean vacations until time ends, and it will be a thrill to see them in handcuffs. But before then, some chancellor must unlock a rule that squanders 40 percent of every dollar for library books. "I have been working on this one for 12 years," said May-McGowan. That time would span seven chancellors and three mayors.

"The books I am talking about are widely available at discounts and the board is insisting through these regulations that it pay list price," says May-McGowan, formerly the head librarian at Bronx High School of Science.

She currently is assembling a library for an elementary school in South-Central Bronx. She has a total of $59,000 in state and federal money to buy the books.

"I am not going to spend it until we can do it the right way," she said. "The principal wants to spend it, and the district wants to spend it - but we all have agreed that we need to wait until we can get the 40 percent discount."

The other day, May-McGowan discussed in print the open secret of the school system - the use of dummy invoices, in which an educator creates a bogus paper trail to buy supplies that would otherwise be trapped in red tape. For instance, a librarian who needs a bookshelf would pretend to buy a box of books, since the central administration can understand the need for a box of books, but not the shelf. In reality, the librarian will have made a secret deal with the vendor to receive a bookshelf.

May-McGowan could use the same technique to spend the $59,000. By fudging the paperwork, she could make that $59,000 go 40 percent further. She has done it before. Why not this time?

"I could do that. I won't. I drew the line. I wasn't interested in doing it right for just one school, I want to change it for the system," she said. "I know that there are vendors that would work with me. But what good is fixing it for one single school if there are kids who need books all over the city, and millions of dollars at stake?"

All this wasted money would be easy to explain if someone were grabbing it for a vacation, or a new car.

But it's worse: The system is designed to blow money without regard to personal gain. And wasting money is legal.

Take the tale of the "Amazing Snakes" book. It was ordered in the spring of 1992 by a famous and well-regarded school in East Harlem. The librarian had been given a few thousand dollars from a state fund to bulk up the library. The state provides $35 for textbooks and $4 for library books for each student. The $4 can be spent efficiently by going to vendors for discounts.

But the other $35 must be spent at distributors that deal in textbooks, and generally will sell only at list price - even though the very same books may be available for 40 percent discounts if they were bought as library books.

"You can't go into Toys 'R' Us and buy the history of America, but you can go in there and buy 'Amazing Snakes,' and at a good discount," said May-McGowan.

"Many of the schools now want to use literature instead of textbooks, but they have to buy the novels and science books as if they were textbooks," she said. "They cannot get full value for their dollar."

Both the state and the feds would permit textbook money to be spent for library books - particularly since kids now use library books for many assignments.

But the Board of Education won't permit it because it has different approval procedures for buying texts and library books.

By following the board's rules, the "Amazing Snakes" book was bought from a textbook distributor - at $7.65, 10 percent above list price.

By changing a computer code to show that these were library books, the book could have been bought from another distributor for 40 percent below list, or $4.17.

To change the computer code would require a resolution from the board. A resolution from the board would require a policy statement from an instructional committee on state textbook money.

That would require a review.

And an interface with the procurement division.

"People just shrug their shoulders and say 'That's the Board of Ed,'" says May-McGowan. "But we are not giving in."

With good reason. Today we spend eight cents in the public school libraries for every dollar that was spent in 1980. Thieves we will have with us always.

But no one said we had to be stupid about the money forever.